Is Chicago designed to encourage drunk driving?

Among the nation’s top 25 cities, Chicago ranks near the bottom in traffic fatalities per 1,000 people, and has a middling rank in the number of traffic fatalities involving intoxication per 1,000 people. Chicago trails only Denver and Houston, however, in the rate of fatal crashes involving intoxication. You’ll find the data, and the headline question, in an article at The Atlantic Cities.

There’s a strong division … between the ten cities on the list where fatal accidents are the least common. Six of them — NYC, Boston, Baltimore, SF, Washington D.C., and Philadelphia — remain in the bottom ten of column four, with low rates of fatal crashes involving intoxication. But Seattle, Chicago, San Jose and San Diego shoot into the top ten. What characteristics distinguish the former from the latter? Design? Geography? Culture?